A New Zealand man recently came across the first tracks of an extinct giant flightless bird ever found on the nation’s South Island, Quartz reported.
The footprints of the moa, driven to extinction centuries ago by New Zealand’s first settlers, are believed to be as much as 12 million years old
While taking his dogs for a swim in a river in a remote area, Michael Johnston noticed some unusual markings in the clay, and contacted the local Otago museum.
Days later, museum experts used snorkels and underwater cameras to find seven moa footprints preserved in the river’s hard clay, beneath about three feet of water.
When New Zealand’s first settlers arrived in the country in around 1300, they found a series of islands with lots of seafood, not much by way of edible plant life, and some of the most extraordinary flightless birds the world had ever seen.
Moa should not have been at risk. These enormous birds stood twice the height of an adult man, and they weighed nearly three times as much.
They had few natural predators, except for the now-extinct Haast’s eagle, with their size weapon enough against almost anything.
But they were slow, unwieldy, and possibly quite delicious. With few alternative sources of food, New Zealand’s newly arrived Maori people quickly grew accustomed to killing and eating them. Within a century, the birds were gone forever.
Recent wet weather in the area seems to have eroded the bank, exposing the clay slab below, with its seven footprints. Each is roughly a square foot in size. Museum experts are now extracting the footprints from the clay, with a view to eventually making them available for researchers to study.
WN.com, Jim Berrie
Photo:
Creative Commons /
